


A Shade. A Shadow.

by IrksomeIrene



Category: Original Work
Genre: Again, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Magic, Oneshot, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Third Person, Superheroes, Tumblr Prompt, for now, villain to civilian to villain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 08:25:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13923213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrksomeIrene/pseuds/IrksomeIrene
Summary: Tumblr prompt fromWriting Prompts: "You were once the most powerful villain. You retired early and are engaged to a minor super hero who isn’t aware of your past. They are about to be killed right before your eyes..but you step in."





	A Shade. A Shadow.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Writing Prompts for posting this prompt right before I was supposed to go to bed. I wrote this instead of sleeping again so it’ll probably start getting a bit sketch about a quarter of the way through but screw it. If I still like it in the morning I might try to make a series of it. The warning about graphic violence is for a very brief but unpleasant run in with some creatures towards the end.

Libitina was well named. Where she went, death and destruction followed. She was never captured, never unmasked. She put fear—real and true fear—into the hearts of the world’s mightiest Heroes. Religions leaders the world over thought she was some sort of bringer of the apocalypse.

And then she vanished.

No godly battle between the queen of evil and the collected forces of good (Heroes the world over had been putting aside grudges and quietly joining forces for just such an event), no dramatic self realization ending in an equally dramatic suicide. Just… nothing. She simply… _stopped._

For over a year, intelligence agencies and Heroes sat on a razor’s edge, bracing for something huge, something truly world ending, something that would explain her extended silence. But then one year became two, and two became three, and then there were upstarts and new villains to fight and slowly, slowly, Libitina was turned into a near myth.

And from Libitina’s grave quietly rose the comely but ordinary Ophelia Digby. Ophelia lived (and was content with) a simple life. Her life became clockwork. She jogged through Crystal Lake Park every morning, worked as an in-house graphic designer for a PR company during the week, volunteered at the animal shelter every Wednesday and Saturday, and had brunch with her friends from work every other Sunday. People liked Ophelia. So what if she was a bit quiet? So what if she could be a bit of a recluse? She was soft and kind and _listened_. Life seemed like it would go on forever like that; simple, pleasant clockwork. But life—at it’s heart—is change.

Enter Noah Hall.

Beg was a big city with a stupid name. Nearly eight million people called it home, which made it a rather large target for villains, ne'er-do-wells, and kingpins of all shapes and sizes. Like most cities near its size, Beg was home to more than a few Heroes. Noah Hall was one of them. He had been assigned to guard the Upper Dossit neighborhood of Beg after various braveries accomplished in his hometown. He was also one of a growing number of Heroes that chose not to hide their identity behind a mask and so Ophelia recognized him the moment she set eyes on him at the shelter. For heart stopping minutes, Ophelia was frozen in fear; terrified to pay for the sins of Libitina—unwilling to run from her well earned fate.

Only nothing happened. Nothing except the director gave Noah “The Marksman” Hall a rather ill fitting blue shirt with “volunteer” printed across the back and a _much_ longer tour than any other volunteer had ever received. For weeks, Ophelia sat on edge, jumping at shadows, debating just making a run for it every single day and night. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to be dragged from her home and locked into some hole in the ground while Truth and Justice threw away the key.

_Only nothing happened_. Noah’s volunteering was irregular at best (a day job like his didn’t allow for a clockwork life) but he was always friendly and always welcome. He was friendly and charming and good with cats and the few exotic birds that had found their way to the shelter. Ophelia did her best to stick to her dogs and the resident python (Monty, as Ophelia had named him) that wasn’t technically allowed to be adopted as he was a banned exotic species. It took time before she could breathe again—even outside the shelter. It took even more time before she began to relax back into her clockwork life by increments. And she was just about back to normal, safe in the knowledge that Noah was strictly here to pet cats, clean out litter boxes and cages, trim nails, and encourage visitors to take the first steps towards adoption—when nothing finally became something.

“Would you like to grab a coffee some time?” Noah “The Marksman” Hall, Hero of Upper Dossit, Tier 3 Hero of Beg, asked Ophelia “No One In Particular” Digby out to coffee with a nervous shift in his step and sweaty hands in the back pockets of his jeans.

Strangely, Ophelia agreed. Ophelia expected things to end quickly. There was no way a Hero (and such an absolutely sweet golden boy like Noah to boot) would find common ground with someone like her.

Only they did. Lots and lots of common ground to stand on and intellectual conversations to have. One coffee led to two led to dinner led to the next date and the next and the next which all eventually led to a quiet night in, cooking dinner for two together in their little kitchen, a knee taken, and a ring given.

They were in no mad rush to marry, had no desperate need for a massive wedding. They would take their engagement as they had taken their relationship thus far; at their own pace. And for that, Ophelia was grateful for—like the clearly insane person she was—she was (not for the first time) giving serious thought to telling her precious Noah the truth of Ophelia before she was Ophelia. Or else tracking down Doctor Void to remove her powers from her and forever bury Libitina.

In the end, the choice was taken from her.

The Crimson Elite, a band of super villains that had given even Libitina a run for her money in all things chaotic and bloody, rained hell down upon Beg. There were other Heroes taken hostage, there were other faces she should have seen—would have recognized as friends of Noah and Ophelia. But all she could see from her place among the crushing heard of trapped, terrified Beg citizens on that busy downtown street was her Noah; battered, bruised, bound, and bloody. He could barely keep his head up but his glassy eyes managed to find her in the crowd.

She saw the resignation in them, knew there was no last minute help, knew this was not some ploy, knew Noah had no more tricks of his sleeves. Ophelia took a step towards him, desperate and uncaring of The Dark Sage as he monologued on whatever new world order had crawled into his brain this week but Noah gave a little shake of his head. It clearly caused him some disorientation and it took him another eternal minute to find her wide, desperate eyes again. The Dark Sage was still speaking, his words striking fear into the hearts of Beg’s people—and distantly, fury into her own. But what was worse—what truly broke her, what decided the entire thing was the tears in Noah’s eyes as his busted lips turned upwards at the corners and he whispered through the distance, “I love you.”

The tear that spilled down Ophelia’s cheek burned her to her very core. Sage was going to kill them—kill Noah—to purge the city’s sins or make way for glorious freeing chaos, Ophelia couldn’t hear him anymore over the dangerous quiet settling inside her own head.

Because Ophelia was dying. In Noah’s place, Ophelia would die and Libitina would be born again. It was a truth that hummed in every bone of her body. It was not even something she found she might regret. Because Noah would live. Their life together would die with Ophelia, of course. And that felt like a gutting from stem to stern. But that was how death worked, wasn’t it? And what pain was that compared to what would come if Noah was laid to rest in her stead? Was murdered right before her very eyes while she had the power to stop it? Surely not even the Devil himself could put upon her a worse agony than that.

No, better to be loathed by her love and still share this world with him than to hold his heart to his bitter end.

So with the absolute calm she had once been so known for, Libitina pulled the shadows to her, making them bend and crawl and melt against the light, casting darkness into the sky, the wind stirring in the sudden changes of temperature as cold shade and shadow came to greet their long lost mistress. Her eyes went black as the hoards around her screamed in new fear, scattering about her as she moved with slow, even paces towards The Crimson Elite. The long shadows cast by high rises and sky scrapers slid against the hour to touch at her feet, to cast her in darkness. Color leached from the world in a strange, unnerving way until every inch of the world for blocks and blocks was nearly monochrome. The heat of the sun—of light—was chased from the downtown square leaving citizens shaking with cold, their breathe faintly visible with every terrified, shaky puff of life they grasped at then expelled. The sudden and radical change in atmosphere drew the full attention of The Crimson Elite.

But it was, of course, too late.

The Dark Sage shouted at the three of his team that were with him, they scrambled to form an offense. Perhaps she really had been gone to long if cockroaches like these did not flee for their lives at the sight of her.

She lifted her hands from her sides, her palms turned up, her blackened fingertips like claws towards the sky as she lifted darkness from darkness. From the shadows came forth with languid delight terrifying beasts beyond description; like deep sea creatures brought up to be beholden by some early man, the strangeness of them were simply incomprehensible.

Noah thought he could make out razor sharp teeth in places but to look to long at any creature brought forth made his eyes ache and his gut wrench in fear until anything he’d felt before. Light did not refract from them, did not give them shape. They existed purely in negative space, given form only by absence. Razor—his would be best man and fellow Hero—stared too long at one creature as it passed them by (it was impossible to tell how near or far they were, some sort of optical allusion) and wretched so violently Noah could feel him shaking through their shared restraints even after he’d well and truly emptied his stomach.

Noah still couldn’t even begin to comprehend what he’d just witnessed as he’d greedily tried to fill every one of his precious few remaining seconds on Earth with the sight of his would-be wife. He’d watched his sweet, kind, gentle Ophelia transform into some… some sort of _creature_ and he couldn’t even begin to wrap his (most likely concussed) head around it. But he’d been in enough fights with evil to feel the massive fray gear up by the second. That was something he could focus on. That was something he could handle. That was something he knew. (Better than his fiancee, apparently.)

Only that, too, was taken from him. For at that very pinnacle of action, at that very razor’s edge before everything exploded into the traditional battle between good and evil; the alien shadow creatures devoured the four present members of The Crimson Elite.

No, devour was too clean a word for it. The beasts ripped and tore and shredded with abandon, pulling arms and legs off the villains like cruel children with helpless spiders. Noah closed his eyes to it, turned away and sobbed in sickened horror, swallowed down wave after wave of bitter bile as he was still forced to hear the sounds of the swift but hellish murders before him.

The entire ordeal— from the death of Ophelia to the murder of a majority of The Crimson Elite— was over in  a barely five minutes.

Libitina lowered her hands back to her sides, the shadows slid back into place, the tumultuous wind calmed, the sun warmed Beg, and color returned to the world— though not to Libitina’s eyes . As life began to return to the square in small measures, people gathered their courage, helped their fellows, freed their Heroes from bondage, and gave the unmoving woman at the center of it all a wide, wide berth.

Libitina did not resist arrest. Libitina did not speak a single word during her interrogation or her trial. Libitina did not see  Noah “The Marksman” Hall  after the day Ophelia Digby died in Begging Square. The Queen of Villains simply gazed off into a distance beyond interrogation walls, beyond the hard and secretly frightened gazes of the lawful good that came and went.  She was charged with a laundry list of crimes and answered only with silence when asked for her plea. The judge put to her that silence would mean guilt and silent she remained.

Ophelia Digby had feared being put in a hole in the ground like so many others—had feared what she would become in that sort of all encompassing darkness—feared what would one day crawl out with no need of key or conscience. She should have given Truth and Justice more credit.

It was not a deep, dark hole in the ground she was taken to. No, her prison was made in  the hot heart of a mountain, in the middle of a desert. Her cell was so bright, so blindingly white, it finally broke her silence as she cried out in pain the moment they opened the door before her. She flinched and shied away but was forced inside without mercy—she could not argue that she deserved an ounce of it, anyway. The blinding light, the pure white was maddening and draining. Though they kept her bound and sedated twenty four hours a day, in truth there would have been no need of it after the first week. 

Libitina wondered, as she felt herself slowly slipping away, becoming not but a hollowed out shell—a brittle jar with all the rotted jam spilled out—if this merciless light, this place that made no room for shade or shadow, had not space for gray; was it so much different from the pitch black that lived within her? Were the pitch black and the pure white two sides of the same evil? Certainly, she deserved her fate. There was so much blood on her hands, she had never been able to forgive herself for it—had nearly taken matters into her own hands at her darkest hours. But perhaps good and evil were not nearly so monochrome as anyone liked to think. Perhaps there was a bit of vengeful  cruelty in Truth and Justice. Perhaps there was a bit of kindness in Chaos and Evil.

Though she could have no answer, it was certainly something to think on as the white light ate her alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Feed me with kudos and comments. Especially since no one reads the Original Works section.


End file.
